Hours are recorded when engineers tap start travel, arrive and complete. Field Ascend prices each day from those hours using the pay rules you set per person: period overtime, travel rules, time-of-day bands, travel zones, day allowances. Then it exports the pay codes in the layout your payroll system imports.
It is not a PAYE engine and does not try to be. Sage, BrightPay or your bureau keep doing the tax. What they receive from Field Ascend is a file where the hours and pay codes are already worked out, and where any overtime figure can be traced back to the rule that produced it.
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Payroll Settings opens with a five-step card that shows exactly how a day is priced, and each person's Payroll page carries a one-line version. No hidden order of operations.
The engineer's basic rate against the hours the job actions recorded: travel out, on site, travel back. Recorded once, in the app, not typed up on Friday.
Daily or period overtime, double time, weekend and bank holiday rates, time-of-day bands, a consecutive-day premium. Each is a dial on the person's Payroll page.
Minimum paid rules and automatic allowances that add together on every qualifying day. The page totals what they add and warns when two per-day rows are both live.
A zone pays once per day when the person logs time at a site inside it. On a multi-site day the furthest zone worked is the one that pays.
Per diem, overnight, on-call. Set an amount per job title or per person; the person's own figure wins when both exist.
Every step above starts empty. Nobody's pay changes when you switch the module on; it changes when you enter an amount and save.
Every dial lives on the person, not the company, because the electrician on a 4-week contract and the salaried supervisor are not paid the same way. All of them start off.
Overtime after N hours per week, fortnight, four weeks or month, with or instead of daily overtime. Teams paid under US, Canadian or Australian overtime rules use the same dial with a weekly threshold.
Paid or not. Exempt from daily or period overtime, from double time, from weekend and bank holiday rates, from time bands. Whether it counts towards the overtime clock at all. "Travel is paid at basic, never overtime" is one tick.
A night or early band can be a multiplier, a fixed £/hr, or £/hr on top of the base. Stack Rates stacks them when you want that and keeps them separate when you do not.
Paid-time rounding. Lunch deducted only when the day exceeds N hours. A consecutive-day premium. Mileage pay after a free-miles threshold, and none at all for someone in a company vehicle.
Set weekly, fortnightly, four-weekly or monthly once in Payroll Settings. Timesheets and the export get a This / Last pay period button, so the range is never typed in wrong.
The staff portal and the staff reports price a day exactly as the office does. A person checking their own week sees the office's number, not an estimate.
Zone pay usually means a spreadsheet of postcodes and a Friday afternoon of checking which engineer went where. Field Ascend measures each site's distance from your office once, files it in a zone, and pays that zone automatically for every day someone works there.
Name them (Zone 1, Zone 2 and so on), give each an up-to-N miles from your office location, and every site zones itself. A site can be forced to a named zone by hand; a star marks the ones you set.
A default amount per day, and a different amount per job title where you need it. Anyone who logs time at a site in the zone is paid it once for that day.
A Travel Zone column and filter on Sites, a Set Zone bulk action, a zone badge on each Timesheets day, Travel Zone and Zone Pay columns on the export. Engineers see a read-only chip on their own Timesheets tab.
The Allowances modal lets the office force a zone, or None, for a single day when the automatic answer is wrong. The zone rule is unchanged and the one-day exception is kept on the record.
Most payroll queries are one question: why is this number what it is. The answer is on the timesheet before the question is asked.
On Timesheets, hover any overtime or total figure and the day is explained one line per rule: which hours were basic, which tipped into overtime, which band applied, what travel did.
A person with no pay rules shows a No pay rules badge instead of a quiet £0. Days the office has adjusted are labelled Payroll: so nobody mistakes an adjustment for a recorded time.
Hours come from the engineer app: start travel, arrive, complete. GPS is checked against the site. The timesheet review, confirm and lock steps are on the timesheet software for field engineers page.
Sage wants one column order, BrightPay another, your bureau a third. You lay the file out once in Export for Payroll and every later run is a download.
Basic, overtime tiers, bands, travel, zone pay, allowances, mileage, expenses: each its own column. Add Formula, Lookup and Format columns for the fields your payroll file insists on. Rows per job or per pay period.
Totals row, row filters, Excel output. Save the layout and it appears as a one-click download tile for every future run. Starter layouts for Sage 50, BrightPay, QuickBooks Time and generic day or person summaries are included.
If your payroll file is awkward, support can build the template and lock it. It shows as Managed by Field Ascend; duplicate it if you want to edit a copy.
Tick Mark the expense claims in this export as reimbursed via payroll and every approved own-money claim in the file is stamped paid, drops off future exports, and shows Paid back to the engineer in the app. Company-card claims are never stamped: the company already paid. Detail on the expense management software for field engineers page.
HR Settings, Accrual, is off until you set Mode to Earn per pay period. Staff then earn a set number of days or hours at the end of every pay period (weekly, fortnightly, four-weekly or monthly, from Payroll Settings) instead of receiving the whole year on day one. Optional maximum balance and accrue-from date, a Run accrual now button that is safe to press twice, a per-person adjustment with a reason, and an Accrued column on Holidays. Balance is earned plus carried over minus used.
In Accounts Settings, Labour Cost, switch Cost basis to Payroll engine and a job's labour cost becomes exactly what payroll pays for those rows (overtime, night bands, travel rules, mileage pay, adjusted days) multiplied by each person's on-cost multiplier, with the breakdown in the job profit panel. Quotes can carry a Role per labour line and are costed at that role's average pay. Nothing moves until you switch the basis.
Field Ascend does not calculate PAYE, National Insurance or pension deductions and does not file RTI. It prepares gross hours and pay codes and exports them; your payroll software or bureau does the rest. If you need a specific file layout, support can build and lock the template for you.
Payroll is the last step of a chain that starts when a job is booked. Each link is a page of its own.
Gantt view of every day, GPS audit flags, overlap detection, confirm and lock: timesheet software for field engineers.
Pay rules live on the same person record as leave, training, documents and cases: workforce management software.
Own-money and company-card claims, approval, reimbursement status: expense management software for field engineers.
Approved leave blocks the planner so nobody is scheduled on a day off: holiday-aware job scheduling.
Invoices, credit notes, supplier bills and expenses posted to your accounts package: accounting integrations.
Where the hours come from, offline in a plant room or a basement: field service app for engineers.
It prepares it. Field Ascend prices every engineer's day from the recorded hours and your pay rules, then exports the pay codes in the layout your payroll system imports (Sage 50, BrightPay, QuickBooks Time and generic layouts are provided). PAYE, RTI submissions and pensions stay in your payroll software or with your bureau.
No. Every rule on a person's Payroll page starts off and every travel zone and allowance starts empty. Pay changes when you enter an amount or turn a dial on and save, not before. Job labour cost also stays as it is until you set Cost basis to Payroll engine.
Yes, that is one tick. Travel has its own settings: paid or not, exempt from daily or period overtime, from double time, from weekend and bank holiday rates and from time bands, and whether it counts towards the overtime clock at all.
Each zone has a distance from your office (up to N miles) and an amount per day, with a different amount per job title if you want one. Every site zones itself by distance, or you set it by hand. Anyone who logs time at a site inside a zone is paid that zone once for the day; on a multi-site day the furthest zone worked pays.
Hover it on Timesheets. The day is explained one line per rule: basic hours, the point overtime started, which band applied, what travel did. People with no rules show a No pay rules badge rather than a silent zero, and days the office adjusted are labelled Payroll.
Yes. On Export for Payroll, tick Mark the expense claims in this export as reimbursed via payroll and every approved own-money claim in the file is stamped paid, drops off future exports and shows Paid back to the engineer in the app. Company-card claims are never stamped, because the company already paid. Un-reimburse or Reopen if a mistake is made.
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